I’m reading the Axis of Time trilogy, and one of the weapons the 21st Century ships have for defense is Metal Storm. Metal Storm is a system in which multiple rounds are loaded into a barrel and are fired electronically, each charge firing in sequence. I know that Metal Storm exists as a hand-held weapon and as a multiple-tube launcher.
Is there a CIWS variant of Metal Storm for shipboard protection? How much more effective is it/would it be than Phalanx?
Interesting. I didn’t see mention of a CIWS.
I know of Metal Storm from one of the documentaries on one of the military channels. Those shows often leave much to be desired. One possible omission, as I don’t remember seeing it, is how are the weapons reloaded? The article mentions ‘slow reloading times’, and it seems from the description that the rounds are in direct contact with the barrels. It sounds like the old arcade guns where projectiles were in a tube that was tipped into the magazine.
Last I heard, they were reloaded by detaching the barrel, attaching a new factory-loaded barrel, and sending the old barrel back to the factory. They may have streamlined that a bit since, though.
It definitely sounds like Phalanx is the better system!
I can imagine an automated reloading system, but Phalanx would be cheaper and more reliable. It would just fire at 3,000 rounds per minute instead of a million. (Not taking into account reloading/recycling time, barrel overheating, etc.)
It’s more accurate too, I would think. One problem with the Metal Storm approach is that the barrel needs to be smooth and many of the rounds only travel through part of the barrel length, so bullet stability isn’t the best.
Since all I know about it is what I saw in the doco, and now from the Wiki link, this is something I’ve thought of as well. I did see some footage today (which prompted the question) showing three rounds from a Metal Storm pistol almost making one hole. The three holes were about half a diameter apart.
The Wiki link talks about 40mm projectiles. In my mind I see something like a 40mm grenade, which I don’t think of as a high-velocity round. I think HV would be better for fleet defense. Good plot device in the books, especially the concern about running out. But like other things, it sounded a little fantastic and I wondered if there really was a Metal Storm CIWS in development.
Sometimes “rounds per minute” can be misleading. I can fire 5 rounds from a pistol in a second, but I can’t fire 300 rounds per minute. This “million rounds per minute” is a lot like that. It’s based on 36 barrels with 5 bullets in each. They fired in a fraction of a second, giving each barrel a 45,000 rounds per minute rate of fire and a combined 1 million rounds per minute, but they can’t actually achieve that many bullets flying through the air in a minute unless they have 200,000 barrels or pack more bullets in. The latter appears to be their plan, it looks like they want to put 540 rounds per barrel, but they’re never going to achieve 1 million bullets fired in a minute without hundreds of barrels.
They could rival the Phalanx’s 3000 rounds per minute (actually 4500 these days) with 5.5 barrels and 540 rounds/barrel, but that seems like a problem that didn’t need solving.
Missed the edit. I read wrong, they don’t plan to cram 540 rounds in a barrel (which would be a looooong barrel), they wanted to test their prototype with 15 rounds per barrel, giving a total of 540 rounds, but only tested with 5/barrel for some reason. But the numbers still show that you either need a lot of barrels or a lot of bullets in each barrel to reach the firing rate of weapons already in use.
I tried to address that in my parenthetical statement.
Eh, by the same token, traveling at 60 miles per hour doesn’t mean I’m going 60 miles, if I’m only on the freeway for ten minutes. The units are fine; you just have to not read more into them than is there.
I know the units are fine, but their car went 100mph for ten minutes, which is impressive and is the same as travelling 100 miles in an hour. But they also hype that they had 450 cars so they can really achieve 45,000 miles in an hour.
They’ve invented a technology that allows a gun to fire at 45,000 rounds per minute. They hooked a truckload of that tech together and are hyping it as a million but their tech still only achieved 45,000.
The other aspect is that the Phalanx fires a big, heavy round (used to be depleted uranium, now it’s tungsten) at a high velocity - over 3000 ft/sec. I don’t think Metal Storm can match that performance.
So why even mention it on the packaging when it’s talking totally hypothetically? Isn’t that false advertising to the average, fallible, non-million rounds owning customer?
Well, several reasons I guess.
They’re not lying and no one will be confused. They have the tech that fires 45,000 rpm. They made a prototype called “Bertha” with 36 barrels that added up fired a combined 1million rpm. They can boast that Bertha achieved 1Mrpm but Bertha isn’t their product, the 45,000 rpm thing is what they offer. If they do have consumers, they will be government or defense people who are going to know what they’re buying.
There probably are no consumers. They did this with a prototype that was retired soon after (from the footnote in the “36 barrel prototype” section of the wiki page) and had a lot of money problems after that until recently getting a contract for 500 grenade launchers with Papua New Guinea Correctional Services. If 500 grenade launchers to Papua New Guinea prisons is keeping you afloat, you probably aren’t supplying the US Navy with next-generation fleet defense systems.
Apparently Metal Storm Ltd are almost broke.
*The company listed on the Australian stock exchange in July 1999, but has recently been at risk of insolvency.
Metal Storm shares last traded at 0.8 cent.*